Act of Contrition
by Morgen86
Summary: Guilt and longing, love and anger. How do you find the first step towards redemption? A MerDer one-shot, post 5.17.


_So, I wasn't originally planning to write a one-shot after Thursday's episode. Because I kinda don't think Mer and Der see each other between the end of last eppy and whenever she turns into Super Mer and summons her strength to save him in this coming one. (Maybe she will wear a cape!) So yeah. I was pretty satisfied with what we got, and I was planning on just being a good little updater and working a lot on Love in the Time of Science. But, um… then I was listening to a whole lot of A Storm is Going to Come. And I kinda wrote this instead?_

_It's a bit of an experiment. Normally I write in past tense with lots of dialogue. It's what I'm comfortable with, but this is neither in past tense or dialogue-y..._ _And probably not all that comfortable either. Hmmm..._ _We'll see. It's not happy, but there are little pieces of hope. Apparently, I really, really like my MerDer with a side of angsty. _

-----

His head is a cyclone. She will not leave it.

He drove her away like kicking a dog, and he feels about as proud. Relief was supposed to come when she finally got in her car and left, but it does not; she will not leave his head. Derek growls at the intrusion and starts to pace.

There is little room for that. Clothes are spilled everywhere inside the trailer. Like emergency room victims with their entrails falling out. (He will not be the one to save them.) Today has not been a day for packing calmly. Unpacking calmly. Neither happened, and he trips over jeans and a pair of dress shoes.

He shouts and staggers forward.

"Fucking…"

The curse hangs unfinished and he kicks at the shoe. It flies down the length of the trailer like a soccer ball speeding towards its goal and hits the wall with a heavy thud. The sound is satisfying in a way that very little still is. He wants to throw things, break things. The metal clang of bat to beer cans had been nice. (Bat to ring not so much. His mother's tears at his father's funeral. That had been the sound.)

He kicks some more things just to hear what noise they make. The soft thwap of a sweater colliding with the toe of his shoe. The heavier clatter when he pushes a chair and watches it fall. He staggers into the kitchen and opens up a cabinet with clumsy hands. A mug sits quietly on the shelf. Red porcelain. White lettering across the front. He squints at it. Immunex. Drug companies always leave swag when you're a doctor.

He isn't anymore. He's done.

This seems appropriate somehow. He hoists the mug high in the air and lets go. It plummets straight down. (Gravity is reassuring right now. He doesn't know why.) Porcelain cracks and shatters. There are tiny shards all over the sink. And great big chunks of red like the pieces he pulled out of Jen's brain.

Murderer.

The lawyers used nicer words, but the meaning is the same.

His stomach lurches, and Derek leans forward. He gags and heaves and waits for vomit that does not come. Alcohol churns in his stomach, mixing with the cereal he had that morning. He has eaten nothing since.

When he straightens up, his mouth tastes like bile and his head swims. He fixes the problem with another drink. Scotch this time. He loses the cap after it untwists when he flings it at the wall. It plinks against something as it lands, and then it is forgotten. The floor rushes up and he sinks down, drinking as he slumps. The room still swims, but he tastes alcohol now instead of bile. (A murderer does not get to ask for more.)

Derek scoots along the floor, dragging the scotch behind him. He starts to rummage to stop the thinking; she will not leave his head. Cabinets are flung open and slammed shut as it strikes his fancy. Everything is in disarray. Like his life. Like his head. He has no clue what he's searching for until he finds it. A half emptied bottle of tequila on a dusty shelf. He pulls it into his arms, and it is Meredith.

He opens her bottle and drinks. It is familiar. Comforting. She usually smells like flowers. Lavender. Feminine, sweet. But sometimes like this. Like tequila. He closes his eyes and remembers. This was how he met her. A black dress and no name. She was alcohol and sex. She breathed it down his neck. Threw back her head and rocked her hips.

That was how she'd rolled the storm in.

He wonders what it would feel like not to love her. If that would make his failure less. He cannot even imagine. (Another failure.) She lives and breathes and thinks he's a drunk. A quitter. A murderer. It is unbearable.

And he loves her.

He swallows another mouthful of her drink and assigns her more of his thoughts.

Derek Shepherd kills.

And quits.

And fails.

He does not deserve a wife.

These are the things she should have said. These are truths. Facts. Like his death count.

He switches to scotch for a mouthful. Then tequila. Scotch. Tequila. Scotch. He holds a bottle in each hand. Sometimes he clinks them together. He pretends it's them.

Seven swallows until he can't tell the two apart. They blend on his tongue and drip down his throat tasting the same.

He vaguely remembers parties in college. Sticky, crowded, smoke filled ones Mark had to drag him to. There was always a big punch bowl. Enough shit to fuck you up good, all mixed in a bowl. That was how he described it. Mark. The ex-best friend. Brother no more.

Derek is mixing it all now in real time. His gut's the bowl. The beer went first. Now scotch and tequila. He's pretty sure it's supposed to be Everclear and a bunch of crap that all tastes like fruit. Meredith would tell him if she was here. He'd bet anything she knows how to make it, but he has nothing worth betting anymore. He's already sold his fucking soul.

The room is spinning slowly now, and so he sits and hates Mark for awhile. It's nice. There's a lot there to hate; his knuckles are still bruised from the fight. Skin battered yellow and brown. It hurts his hands to grip the bottles so he squeezes them as hard as he can. The floor is relentless, unforgiving; his legs go numb. He doesn't shift. Pain is penance. It's all that's left.

It is why she had to go.

Meredith got him ice. She shared his drinks. Sat there in silence when he couldn't speak. She would've slept with him too, unshowered and disgusting as he was. A bitter part of him wishes he could say it's because she's a whore. If she's worthless, maybe losing her won't hurt quite so much. Maybe. But he cannot even think the words. She's still there in his head, and she won't let the lie out. She says he's lied enough today. And when he drinks from her tequila bottle it tells him things. She would've let him have her. Let him fuck her, really, because he would've been too far gone to make any kind of love. The tequila says it's because she loves him. Loves him enough to want to give him anything he wants. (Except commitment, says the scotch.)

He could've had her, even tonight, but no.

He hadn't touched her.

Her arms would take the pain away, and he's supposed to feel it. He believes in punishment, and this is his.

No Meredith. (No wife, no home, no kids.)

He wonders what it would've been like to marry her. (There was a ring and she didn't run.) It hurts to think of this, so he keeps going. He paints each picture with careful strokes. Meredith as a bride. Her hair streaming, her hips encased in white. Flowers at her side. The images won't quite align. It feels wrong and almost comical. He likes to humor himself and think that he knows her, and he thinks she wouldn't want white. She wouldn't want a cake they cut standing side by side. She might be his wife but never his bride.

He likes this. He had a bride once. He found her eleven years later in bed with his best friend.

Mark is a poison. (Why does he always forget this?)

He has taken everything he shouldn't. Addison. If his hunch is right, at least one of his sisters. Now Lexie too. It's a miracle he never got anywhere with Meredith. Or maybe it's just that she is Meredith and betrayal is one of the few bad habits Derek knows she never learned. The only lies she ever tells are ones she believes in herself. This pains him. (He's told a lot of lies.) He starts to list her flaws so he will not have to care if she never looks at him again.

He mumbles and slurs and tells them to the silence.

She drinks.

_(Not as much these days, but often enough that there's no mistaking her for any kind of saint.) _

She snores.

_(Does that count? He can't remember the last time he wore earplugs.)_

She's slept with more than her fair share of men.

_(He never wants to know the number. He cannot bear to think of all the pairs of hands on her that are not his. But he likes all the things she's learned somewhere along the way. In some stranger's bed. Maybe he's the whore.) _

He drains the scotch and promises the emptiness that there is more.

She can't commit.

_(She can. She can. She can.)_

She runs.

_(To him.)_

She kills herself.

_She quits._

It is a long list and he still doesn't deserve her; she would never make one about him. He hurls the empty scotch bottle at the wall and watches it shatter. Glass is everywhere. A snowstorm of slivered pieces. All the shards are swimming. It is beautiful. Reflecting light. He pretends it is his soul. (Look what he has done to it.)

Does he have one? A soul?

Was there a heaven? Did Dad sit side by side with Jen to scorn him? (Wretched son. Failed doctor.)

_Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned._

He lurches to his knees.

_I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee_

The words are old and weathered. They lost their meaning long ago. His feet find the floor and he stands up.

When was it he stopped believing in God? What year? They all had. Every last sister of his. They are not good Irish Catholics. He is not a good anything.

He staggers past his soul and out into the night.

The tiny white lights illuminate very little. Derek watches the darkness as it spreads. Perhaps it will swallow him whole. He stumbles down the steps and beer cans flee from his approaching feet. He waits for the blackness to eat him alive. When it doesn't, he starts walking. Meredith's tequila has come with him and he drinks from it. It will be his friend.

When he trips over the bat, he remembers all over again. He has lost his father's ring. He is a wretched son.

Disgraced.

He kicks off his shoes. His socks. It is too dark to see. Barefoot, he shuffles across the grass, feeling with his feet. Searching for it in an act of contrition.

He has lost his father's ring.

Derek has a secret he does not admit to himself; he cannot remember the sound of his father's voice. It's distorted in memory. He is sure the sound is wrong. Warped with time like old wood. For this he is sorry, he tells the sky. Something rumbles in reply.

He has lost his father's ring.

His feet find nothing but wet grass and more wet grass. It's raining now. He wonders why he didn't notice this before, but it doesn't matter. The search must carry on despite the storm. He has lost his father's ring, and he is damned if it is gone.

The tequila stays with him and helps him look. He takes huge gulps as he drags his feet. Swallows bitterness, forces it down. The trailer has become a blob. The string of white lights scrambles together. Derek tilts his head back and gasps, letting the rain pelt his face. Colors bleed. His skin runs like melted plastic and he vomits abruptly, bending over at the waist. The tequila bottle tilts as he does. Glugging along to the sound of his retching. Something splatters against his bare feet.

He does not remember how to straighten up. Just drops the bottle and crashes to the ground. The grass is slick and he sprawls. Air escapes him in a sudden whoosh. He feels it leaking from his lungs. Emptying him out.

He spreads his arms out and sweeps them in wide arcs. His palms are flat to the ground. Rain is spitting against his shoulder blades, and he brings back nothing.

It is gone.

He cannot find his father's ring. He will not get his beautiful wife.

(She would not have him anyway. She cannot still love him now.)

He clutches the grass as the land flip-flops. The ground is overhead, and if he lets go, he will fall to his death through the sky. It's only fair. He believes in punishment, and murderers deserve to die.

Finger by finger he loosens his grip. He sobs. It takes a long time. His clothes are soaked. (The rain won't stop.) Maybe he will drown first.

Suddenly, he is aware his hands are holding nothing. His stomach churns.

The world goes black.

-----

Meredith slams the car door shut. There's something therapeutic to the sound, but it does very little to fix her mood. She shakes her head as she walks to the front door. She thinks she shook it the whole way home. Her key turns in the lock, and she is welcomed back by their darkened house. _Theirs._ It's a shared life. He can have his space for the night. She knows how pointless it is to reason with a drunk. But it's still their house. Their life.

He doesn't get to take this from them. Not now when she's finally ready to have it.

Inside, it's too quiet, and the den smells stale. Marshmallows squish beneath her feet. Derek's take-out boxes are a small, ugly avalanche. She wants to yell at him for leaving them out when he had the time to pack all his crap. A trip to the garbage would've taken a minute. She stalks past the boxes and into the kitchen. Her stomach's growling and damn it, she's not his maid. He can clean them up himself when he gets his ass back home.

Meredith eats three slices of leftover pizza straight out of the box in the fridge, standing in the ray of light cast by the open door. Her thighs feel cool, crisp, chilled. Like she's tucked herself away in the vegetable drawer. Irritation fades with every bite until she simply aches a little from all the things he said. He's usually far more graceful with his words, even when he's being cruel. She gets the sentiment though; it stings.

But more than that, she misses him. And her left hand misses a weight it's never known. He had it right there in his pocket. Her engagement ring. Her ring finger burns and she rubs at it with greasy fingers.

She wants to try it on, but it's gone.

He took a freaking bat to it.

Her ring.

She still can't quite believe he managed to hit it with all the beers he'd put away. Maybe the Derek Shepherd she's never known played baseball along with guitar. For a moment, she lets herself laugh. Thinking of him in those silly white pants, grass stains on his knees. Swinging bat after bat. It's better than the alternative. The empty kitchen where she longs for him. The ring finger that feels naked without a ring it's never worn.

(How is it possible to miss something she never even had?)

She's a little disgusted with herself, leaning against the fridge and fantasizing about a ring. Meredith Grey will not become some sugary cliché. She does not want to be anyone's blushing bride. She refuses to play at being virginal and walk down an aisle dressed in white.

But she wants to be his wife.

She wants papers that make the whole world recognize how incredibly real this thing has become. She wants to debate about what to do with her last name. She wants him to build them a house on a stretch of land so vast and wild that nothing bad will ever find them again. And she wants to know what it feels like to have his child grow inside her. (She cannot quite believe this one herself, but she does.)

She is going to be his wife one day.

She's already decided as she walks up the stairs to her bedroom. (Theirs.) She stills when she reaches the second floor. The hallway is alive with moaning. Her house is a brothel and she'd roll her eyes at her roommates, but at least Izzie's sounding something close to normal. Better than normal, really. She's been her own special brand of crazy lately, and Meredith wishes she had the energy to figure out why. Thank god for Alex because caring for the train wreck Derek has become is a full time job. She has no time to worry about anyone else. (When did the screw-ups become the strong ones?)

She shuts the door on the sounds before it's enough to make her jealous. The bedroom greets her with stark silence and chaos. Drawers are in disarray. He packed like a maniac. A man on the run. She wants to be mad at him, but she gets it all too well. It's a deep hole she's visited before. A dark place where you hate yourself. Where every thought is something venomous and you don't think you deserve to breathe, let alone love. She knows it like the back of her hand, and the only thing she can feel when she thinks of Derek is sorry that he has to feel it too. It made her drink. It made her screw the nameless men she found in dirty bars. It made her run. (Across Europe and then later, without moving an inch. She pulled Cristina into her bed so there wasn't room for him.)

And on one really bad day, it made her stupid enough not to swim.

That is where he is. In the water, forgetting how to swim. She can't hate him for it. She can't even not love him. (She's tried that one already.) There is no such thing as not loving Derek. It's one of those forever things, the way they are. No bailing. They're in this together.

_For better or worse_

She pulls on an old pair of sweatpants. A t-shirt. Her street clothes litter the floor. She crawls into bed on Derek's side and pulls his pillow to her chest. It still smells of him and her eyes start to sting, but she wipes them dry. She is the daughter of Ellis Grey; it will take more than his words to make her cry.

_For richer or poorer_

But the bed is empty, and it's swallowing her whole. She hugs the pillow even tighter. Buries her face in it. It's her job to bring him back. The would-be fiancée. He wanted to marry her. (Wants. The ring was in his pocket.) She's supposed to know what to do to make the darkness go away for him, but she doesn't have a freaking clue.

_In sickness and health_

If they can't survive this, they have no business getting married. This is a fact and it makes her ill. She curls up in a ball and tries to sleep.

It's her job to bring him back, and she doesn't know how.

_Until death do us part_

She will not cry, but the pillow is damp.

-----

Derek wakes in damp clothes to a raging headache. The grass is wet. The sky too bright. For a moment he blinks, remembering nothing. His stomach roils. He can taste vomit forcing its way up his throat.

He sputters and coughs and throws up the guilt.

His memories are puzzle pieces, and nothing wants to fit. Perhaps he is still drunk. His eyes sting with tears and all he can see is the mess he made in the grass. He rolls away from it, groaning. The trailer comes into view as he stares up at the world from his back. The birds are so fucking loud.

_There's no fixing you._

The words strike his aching skull like a mallet, and he has never hated himself more. She will be well within her rights if she never speaks to him again. He whispers her name to the bitter morning. Meredith. (He has lost the right to call her Mer.)

When his hand brushes against his pocket, he feels a familiar weight. The ring box. He knows immediately that it is empty. He has lost the ring. Disgraced his father's memory. Derek pulls it out all the same. The velvet whispers against his skin, soft and emptied of its promises; he has batted all their dreams away.

Their dreams.

He knows now in the stark light of morning that she would have said yes. Not to humor him. Not because she felt she owed him some new commitment. She would have said yes because she wanted to be his wife.

He tells the rain soaked earth he's sorry. He wishes it was her. He imagines her forgiving him. He imagines her telling him to go to hell.

Derek lies on his back for a long time. There is nowhere to go. Nothing to do. He stares at the open sky. At the bigger picture. The deposition. The death count high enough to make a serial killer flinch. The lawsuit that will show him for what he really is. The girlfriend that will never marry him now.

It's good the ring is gone. Murderers do not deserve beautiful wives.

She does not deserve a husband who rips open every old wound to drive her away.

Guilt crawls like worms through his gut. With every passing second, he discovers it is possible to hate himself a little bit more than he did the moment before. Finally, it occurs to him that he is cold. He thinks he might be shaking. This is good. He deserves it. Shylock will have his pound of flesh after all.

When he does move, it's only to vomit again. Derek rolls over, hoisting himself up on his arms in a deflated push-up. His body wobbles. His insides churn. He heaves and heaves until he is bone dry within. Still he shakes as if he means to spew out every last breath of air. His arms jerk with violent spasms, but they've gone numb. He hangs there immobile. His mouth tastes of bile, and it burns its way down his nose. Falls in heavy droplets from his nostrils. He is disgusted with himself.

He collapses face down in a new patch of grass, wheezing. The world is spinning, and he is ill. He misses Meredith deep down in the marrow of his bones, but he has no plans to ever leave this patch of grass. He will never get to see her face again.

Maybe she will find someone new. He cannot be happy without her. His someone new had been a sham. But Meredith can survive. She can find someone who deserves her.

He sags into the ground, drifting in and out of sleep. Clinging to that fuzzy edge that denies both rest and thought.

When he dares to slit his eyes open, the sun is still above him. This puzzles him. (Time has lost all of its meaning.) Blades of grass face him like hoisted swords, and they are glinting. Sunlight against silver. Metal. Shining. It greets his skull like a bullet hole; bright lights are agony. He groans and closes his eyes.

A small voice tells him that grass doesn't glint. He checks again, and it's still shining. Green grass and reflecting light. It's a nuisance, and he cannot come up with a why. Just stumbles over a string of curses. Flings out a hand to hide the glow. Something sharp scrapes against his palm. Too small, too hard to be a blade of grass. His fingers curl. It's a familiar weight, and he tightens his grip. It feels like a miracle. Slowly, he brings it to his lips, drawing in shuddering, disbelieving breaths with his mouth pressed to his fist.

When he finally dares to open his hand, he finds it lying there in his palm. Innocent. Unharmed.

His father's ring. His mother's ring.

Meredith's ring.

Derek stares at it for a long time. He has earned himself no redemption. It should not have come back to him, but he cannot bring himself to cast it away a second time. His hands tremble as they pick up the discarded box and slip the lost ring back inside.

He has no words for what he feels. It is not hope. He has no delusions. He will not drive in to the hospital; he will save no lives today. Derek Shepherd is a murderer, not a surgeon.

And he has hurt the love of his life.

She will probably never look at him the same way again. If she ever looks at him at all. He does not deserve her for his wife.

He has no words for what he feels, but it still zips through him like an electric shock.

It is a remnant of a beautiful life.

He had not planned to leave this patch of grass today, but he puts Meredith's ring back in his pocket.

And Derek stands up.


End file.
